How to Drive Workplace Productivity in a Virtual Office

In last month's newsletter, I discussed workplace delegation in light of the technological innovations that allow us to reach halfway across the world if desired to find ideal outsourcing providers. But in truth, you can apply this whiz-bang technology to employees in just about any category. Given access to reliable channels of instant communication, you no longer have to keep team members close at hand in order to maximize team and personal productivity.

The virtual office, administered and maintained via cyberspace, has truly come into its own. Your virtual assistant can live in Michigan and your receptionist in Florida, while your prestigious professional address may place you in downtown Manhattan, even if you run everything from your home in the Hamptons. When managed properly, this scenario can work well, since it cuts business costs to the bone, while maintaining the necessary professionalism.

But with every worker just a phone call or email away, a virtual office doesn't work the same way as the old-fashioned kind; in fact, it can exaggerate certain issues managers have always faced, while providing new ones to deal with. So how do you drive workplace productivity in the virtual office of this brave new world?

The Right People, Right from the Start

As with any work group, you first face the challenge of finding the right people to fill the slots in your virtual office team. Arguably, your greatest difficulty will possibly be an inability to meet your new employees in person before you hire them. Telephone and web-cam interviews can make up the shortfall, but they don't offer the sense of intimacy you get from occupying the same room with someone. If nothing else, you miss a lot of their body language.

On the other hand, since they probably won't work directly with you or most of your other team members, their personalities may not matter much to you. In the end, the value of any employee boils down to the kind of results that person can deliver. Can they provide high-quality work on time? Carefully check their references and feedback to tease out this information before you take them on, and if you can't immediately find it, dig deeper until you do.

Many of us hire virtual contract workers through online employment platforms like elance.com and guru.com and odesk.com. As a buyer, you hold most of the cards, since the providers pitch to you; you can then consider them at your leisure. But exercise caution during the selection process. Don't yield to the temptation of selecting the cheapest provider, or the one who presents the slickest pitch, unless they really do offer the best deal. Otherwise, you may end up disappointed--and you could end up spending more money. As the old saying goes: measure twice, cut once.

Finally, take care to match up your employee's skill sets as you hire them, with each individual complementing the others and filling in the gaps in their technical expertise. You can't always engineer a perfect fit; but if you work to get it as close as possible, you'll have an easier time coordinating the group later. Try for some overlap, too, so you can have backups for those times when someone calls in sick or has to deal with a personal emergency.

Scheduling

A virtual office need not follow a traditional schedule--and probably can't, especially if your employees live in different time zones, much less on different continents. Don't assume everyone can make themselves available at any particular time. 2 PM in Chicago works out to 1 AM in Mumbai. Even in the U.S.A., time zones can present problems, as three hours separate the eastern and western seaboards.

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Make it a productive day! ^(TM)

© Copyright 2012 Laura Stack.  All rights reserved. www.TheProductivityPro.com

Time Tips and Tricks

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If you haven't already made the move to a virtual or partially virtual office, you'll probably do so at some point. When you do, you'll want to know where to find the long-distance employees you need; so in this month's tip, I'll discuss a few quality sources of virtual workers.

These web-based entities all act as global employment platforms: clearinghouses, if you will, where workers bid on projects posted by potential buyers. (Economists call this a "reverse auction-type bidding system.") The process offers benefits for both sides, but in many ways, the buyers have the upper hand. Most projects attract quite a few bids, sometimes dozens, so you can carefully pick and choose from the respondents. You'll also get a variety of prices, ranging from a specific baseline (set by the platform) up to amounts that may seem amazingly high. The global nature of the platforms can allow you to choose very economical providers, since you can tap technical experts in countries with lower costs of living.

If the worker fits your needs and provides quality work on time, then you can make them a permanent part of your virtual office, eventually bypassing the clearinghouse altogether. If they don't work out, you can let them go and try someone else. Ultimately, these clearinghouse sites work much like brick-and-mortar employment agencies, but with greater transparency.

Please note: I have no affiliations with any of these websites, but have used Elance.com, in the past. Speaking of Elance: this platform has been around in one form or another since 1999. One of the largest of the virtual worker clearinghouses, if not the largest, it has 1.4 million registered contractors as of this writing. Buyers can post projects in a wide variety of categories, including copywriting and translating, virtual assistants, computer coding, and more. Guru.com also traces its origin back to 1999 and works in a similar way, though doesn't claim quite as many contractors. Other dominant virtual worker marketplaces, all similar in style and execution to Elance and Guru, include Freelancer.com, vWorker.com, oDesk.com, and Scriptlance.

Some of these platforms specialize in specific types of virtual worker, and the structure varies from site to site. But they all provide access to a global pool of potential employees--and most don't charge the buyer a cent. So experiment a bit to find which one fits you best, and move forward from there.

Words of Wisdom

"As we go forward, I hope we're going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work."
-- Sergey Brin, Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, Inc.

"he number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.."
-- Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

"The remote, distributed workforce has gained traction as the accepted standard for the most innovative and forward-thinking businesses. By hiring remote workers, today's businesses are harnessing the speed and flexibility they need to gain a competitive edge and prosper."
-- Gary Swart, American business writer.